Jun 19, 2006

Hawking behind the times

In my opinion,
people who work in the sciences and are considered great geniuses are far down
the genius scale from people who deal with society. Einstein, Bohr, and Darwin are down below tenth position on my
scale. In my top ten are Adam Smith,
John Locke, Sigmund Freud, Milton Friedman, Shakespeare, Max Weber, Baruch
Spinoza, Alexander Hamilton and Joyce Appleby.

Therefore it
should be no surprise that the recent call by Steven Hawking for new human
colonies off the earth comes thirty years after I formed the International
Committee for a New Planet. Hawking, the
scientist, is behind the times compared to a humble unknown social activist
from San
Francisco.

My
organization was formed in 1971, had more than 100 members from around the
world and put on a widely attended conference in 1974 at Green Gulch in California. I also funded, because of my New Planet Committee, the first work by
Gerard O'Neill on the creation of a new planet in earth orbit at Lagrange
Points L-3 and L-5.

I concluded,
personally, that working on a new planet was a good metaphor for working on
this one. Until we know how to get
along, new planets won't be socially stable. Based on this observation, I made a prediction publicly before a small
group of people entered Biosphere II for a two year test.

In spite of
every effort to keep the news secret, Biosphere II failed because of the social
interaction problems... which I predicted.

The work of
social thinkers is far more difficult than anything in science and far, far too
undervalued. The former are culturally
bound, the later are less so.

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Hawking behind the times

In my opinion,
people who work in the sciences and are considered great geniuses are far down
the genius scale from people who deal with society. Einstein, Bohr, and Darwin are down below tenth position on my
scale. In my top ten are Adam Smith,
John Locke, Sigmund Freud, Milton Friedman, Shakespeare, Max Weber, Baruch
Spinoza, Alexander Hamilton and Joyce Appleby.

Therefore it
should be no surprise that the recent call by Steven Hawking for new human
colonies off the earth comes thirty years after I formed the International
Committee for a New Planet. Hawking, the
scientist, is behind the times compared to a humble unknown social activist
from San
Francisco.

My
organization was formed in 1971, had more than 100 members from around the
world and put on a widely attended conference in 1974 at Green Gulch in California. I also funded, because of my New Planet Committee, the first work by
Gerard O'Neill on the creation of a new planet in earth orbit at Lagrange
Points L-3 and L-5.

I concluded,
personally, that working on a new planet was a good metaphor for working on
this one. Until we know how to get
along, new planets won't be socially stable. Based on this observation, I made a prediction publicly before a small
group of people entered Biosphere II for a two year test.

In spite of
every effort to keep the news secret, Biosphere II failed because of the social
interaction problems... which I predicted.

The work of
social thinkers is far more difficult than anything in science and far, far too
undervalued. The former are culturally
bound, the later are less so.